Indiana
by celestial1
Summary: It's a place they've all passed through, and it's also where Kate is buried.


**Indiana**

**author's note.** I've never written in the first person before, but I've read some excellent stories lately that use this perspective so I thought I'd give it a try. I've actually been trying to write this story for _months_; once I switched my point of view, it finally came unblocked.

* * *

The whole time that Tony was out on sick leave, Kate and I drove each other nuts. I guess without Tony around we had to annoy each other, and Gibbs growled more than usual. All I really wanted was for Tony to come back and things to be normal. 

I kept expecting him to give me crap for handing him the letter, but he never did. That should have been my first sign that the universe was out of whack.

* * *

My grandparents lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, so when I was a kid we spent summers driving back and forth to visit them. Sarah and me bickering in the backseat, drinking juice boxes and playing one long endless game of Car Trip Bingo. I always won, because I was older and smarter and Sarah spent half the time reading. I never read in the car or I'd puke; I'd learned that staring out the window was a good cure for queasiness, and what kind of a big brother would I be if I didn't spin that to my advantage? 

Indiana was my least favorite state because all you saw from I-90 was corn. Corn, corn, corn, and soybeans. It was always the midafternoon slump, after the relief of lunch and leg-stretching, before the excitement and bad traffic of Chicago. That was the time when Sarah and I drove each other nuts, when Mom would turn around from the front seat and threaten to leave us both at the next truck stop. And we'd go back to counting the orange Schneider trucks and poking each other in the leg.

Kate was from Indiana, but I gathered she didn't visit much. Her family was from Knightstown, where her father sold recreational equipment. When she died, though, the new director arranged to have her buried at Crown Hill in Indianapolis. I'm sure the Presidential Medal of Freedom helped with that.

* * *

I could hear everything that was going on, through my earpiece, of course. I knew when Kate was shot because then she was joking about it and going to Pilates and everything was fine. And then everything wasn't fine. Her words cut off in the middle of a sentence and I knew something had gone wrong. 

I ran over to the fire escape where Tony was coming down the ladder. Blood all over his face: I thought he was the one that had been shot, but if he was walking, it couldn't be that bad, right? He didn't say a word to me, just fell on his hands and knees and started puking his guts out. Right at the bottom of the ladder, where Gibbs and Kate were going to have to step in it.

I holstered my weapon but kept my hand on it. "What happened? Are you all right?"

"Kate," he said between gags. "Ari got her."

I thought he said 'Ari shot her' but I knew she was wearing a vest. "She'll be okay though, right?"

Tony sat back on his heels, laughing bitterly. "No, Probie," he said, leaning a shoulder against the side of the warehouse, "she won't. Not unless you know of a way to raise the dead."

"She's dead?" I stepped over Tony and his puke puddle to reach the ladder. "Are you sure?" I expected him to make some smart comment, but he was down and heaving again.

Gibbs appeared at the top of the ladder. "Stay down there, Tim," he said. I had never seen him look so tired. "I'll secure the body. You keep an eye on Tony."

"On it, Boss," I replied automatically.

"And Tim?" he added. "Call Ducky."

* * *

We flew on a private jet to Indiana - courtesy of SecNav - but it turned out, SecNav needed it back. The Director left immediately after the funeral; she'd gotten a call, so she took Ducky with her, but the rest of us stayed. We'd catch a commercial flight in the morning, so that we could hang around in some church basement after, eating fried chicken and pretending to remember the names of Kate's great-aunts. Gibbs seemed to be a pro at the grip-and-grin, smiling sadly in the right places, acting appropriately interested in the bluehairs and their stories. 

It was race weekend or something, so there were precious few hotel rooms to be found. We ended up at one of the airport hotels where Gibbs flashed his badge and gun. I thought he was going to grab the hotel clerk by the shirtfront and haul him over the counter. I have no idea what he was so mad about but I wasn't about to stop him. Eventually the nervous clerk found us two rooms. Abby and Ziva took one, and the rest of us got the other.

As soon as we reached the room, Gibbs laid down in one of the two beds, pulled the covers over his head, and went to sleep. At least I think he went to sleep, but I wasn't about to check. Tony looked at the other bed, then looked at me. "I want you to imagine an invisible line down the center of this bed, Probie," he said. "If _anything_ crosses over that line, I will cut it off. Are we clear?"

* * *

I'd only been with NCIS for a year when I met them, but I'd heard stories. Gibbs was legendary so I was automatically in awe of anyone that he considered good enough to be on his team. And watching the three of them was like watching American Idol: they had the scary one, the annoying one, and the nice one. Kate was the Paula Abdul of the trio. It wasn't until I transferred in from Norfolk that she slapped me on the head but as far as I could tell that was some sort of initiation ritual. She'd had older brothers so it must have been fun for her, getting payback. One thing I will say about them, though, is that they never made me feel unwelcome.

* * *

We hadn't expected to stay overnight so no one had really packed anything. The hotel spotted us some toothbrushes and stuff, but it looked like I was going to sleep in my boxers - which my bunkmate sure wasn't going to like. Tony was digging around in his backpack. "Rule fifteen, Probie," he said. He pulled out an Ohio State T-shirt and some gym shorts. Tony was like a walking closet sometimes - I'd seen inside his desk drawers at work, he kept all kinds of clothes and personal hygiene stuff in there. Which explained why he was always borrowing my stapler. 

"What's rule fifteen?"

He pulled out another T-shirt from his apparently bottomless backpack and tossed it to me. "Cover your friends."

* * *

When that creep killed Erin, Kate drove me home. She told me some story about lending her coat to a woman who had amnesia, who blew herself up. I don't know what it had to do with anything, but in a weird way, it made me feel better.

* * *

Tony went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. I heard his coughs echoing off the bathroom tile and I wondered if I should do anything, maybe ask him if he was okay. I remembered Kate telling me about staying in the isolation unit with Tony - how he'd started out apologizing and ended up listing Bonds - and I decided not to say anything. I didn't want to think about him having the plague any more than I wanted to think about Kate getting her brains blown out. 

Tony emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later. The edges of his face were still wet as he headed for the mini fridge in the corner. "Nightcap, Probie?"

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Painkillers and alcohol are a notoriously bad mix, and I knew he'd been sneaking from a prescription bottle since he'd come back to work. I'm sure Gibbs knew it too. The last thing I wanted was to get reamed out by Gibbs for letting Tony drink himself into a coma.

"Two fingers," he said, already cracking open one of the tiny bottles. "Come on. Join me." He must have sensed his reluctance because he added, "They're going to charge us eighteen bucks for this thing. You might as well have some, because I'm not letting it go to waste."

"All right," I agreed. I handed him a glass - _real _glass, this was the Adam's Mark, not some Motel 6 - and he poured a generous splash of the overpriced alcohol. "It was a beautiful funeral, wasn't it?"

"Oh, sure it was." Tony smiled wryly and for a minute, I thought he was going to headsmack me. It was the same scary smile he'd given me when we stood in the bullpen, dripping, and he'd explained how the back of Kate's head was blown out. _It leaves a hole the size of a grapefruit..._ "Did you know that Crown Hill Cemetery is the highest point in Indianapolis?"

"Really?" I wondered if he was turning into Ducky now, or just changing the subject. "Well, it's a pretty flat state, so…"

"Yeah." Tony leaned against the dark window, gazing outside. "You know, it's funny. I drove through Indiana on my way from Ohio to Peoria. I never stopped any longer than to get gas."

He must have seen the cornfields too. "Yeah, but why is that funny?" I asked him, taking another sip of my drink.

"Because Kate?" He set his empty glass on the window sill. "She's going to be here _forever_."

I followed his eyes out the window, watching the headlights passing on the highway. Like Tony, I'd passed through this state half a dozen times, but it had never occurred to me that anyone actually _lived_ here. That in among the soybean fields and BP stations there were towns and cities and people's actual homes. Kate had been raised in one of those homes, maybe playing HORSE in the driveway with her brothers, going to her high school prom. I wish I would have asked her what it was like but it's too late now: her memory was wiped out by Ari's sniper bullet.

Tony rubbed a hand over his eyes and turned away from the window. I didn't know if he'd cried already. I'd gone down to Abby's lab where she was burning a candle, and we both let it out. I don't think I've ever loved Abby more than I did right then. Not that I wanted to sleep with her again - _that_ was an experience best not repeated - but we'd held each other for an hour, tears and snotty noses and all. Tony hadn't broken his stride as far as I could tell: as soon as we'd all come in the next morning he was hitting on the new girl, and probably picturing Kate naked. Gibbs… well, Gibbs was Gibbs. It was hard to tell that anything was different: he's pretty scary on a _good_ day. If Ari wasn't already dead, though, there was no way that he'd be sleeping. Or even that Tony and I would voluntarily be in the same room with him.

"I'm turning in, Probie," Tony said, stretching out on his appointed half of the bed. "Don't stay up past your bedtime."

"'Night, Tony," I told him, still looking out the window. If the buildings weren't there, I imagined, it was flat enough that I could look all the way to the patch of green where Kate's body had been returned to the earth.


End file.
